I Grew Up With Guns, Then I Was Held Hostage With One

Haley Elkins didn’t fight then, but she’s going to fight now.

—-

I love guns. I’m from West Texas — very few of us do not at least respect guns, if not love them outright.

As a trap shooter, I range between the high sixties and the mid eighties, which is pretty damn good for a woman who only gets to shoot once a year or so. I keep about the same record as my father, a former homicide and narcotics detective, who shoots competitively about a half-dozen times each year.

My mother doesn’t care for shooting. It’s a lot of standing around, and her hips and knees can’t take it anymore. But for most of her life, she was just as good as, if not better than, my father.

She smiles knowingly every time I hit a sporting clay.

“It’s because you’re a woman,” is her theory. “You have a lower center of gravity than men, which gives you a more solid stance.”

◊♦◊

Early in my parents’ marriage, they lived in a bigger city than they do now—quite a move for both of them, but in the late 1970s, you went where the oilfield dictated you go.

My mother was often alone for weeks at a time. And at some point soon after they moved, the television in the den started turning itself on in the middle of the night.

My mother was delighted when I once killed a scorpion on our kitchen counter with a high-heeled shoe. I’ve seen her sweep tarantulas off our front porch with a broom.

Now, my mother is about one of the most fearless and sensible women I know. Most oilfield widows have to be.

I’ve seen her be cool, calm, and collected about rattlesnakes. She was delighted when I once killed a scorpion on our kitchen counter with a high-heeled shoe. I’ve seen her sweep tarantulas off our front porch with a broom.

And she was sensible about this, “Probably just someone’s garage door opener or something,” but it still unnerved her a bit.

“I want a gun,” she told my father. “I’m alone all the time; I want a gun.”

Three weeks later, he brought her a pistol and was damn proud of it. She didn’t feel the same way.

“What the hell is this?” she demanded. My mother has never been one to pussy-foot around. “I meant a shotgun. What the hell am I supposed to do with a pistol? Shoot myself in the foot? Do you know how hard this thing is to aim and actually hit something? Am I supposed to slink around the house in the dark with this thing? What if one of these bullets goes through a wall and kills Mrs. Gladyson next door? Get me a shotgun.”

He bought her a shotgun.

♦◊♦

Before Luke and I were married, we would have outrageous fights that were, essentially, us flexing our backgrounds and feeling out our differences, numerous between a Native American/Italian immigrant Texas woman and a decidedly WASP Ohioan who says “those are they” instead of “that’s them.”

One of the biggest arguments we ever had—which resulted in me sleeping in the guest room for two nights—was about guns.

I have a Winchester over-and-under that was a gift from my grandfather.

And I love that gun.

It’s a 12 gauge, which should make it heavier with bigger recoil than a 20 gauge, but somehow, magically, it isn’t—it’s lighter, with less recoil than most modern 20 gauge shotguns I’ve handled. Or maybe it’s just that this has always been my gun, and I’m most used to it.

But it did not travel with me to Ohio because, like many puzzling facts about living in the north, we were unsure about transporting even a shotgun across multiple states to occupy a small, highly urban apartment with me.

We will never, ever, ever have guns in this house. Ever.

Luke and I were discussing how, after living in Cincinnati a year, I now wanted my shotgun.

“We will never, ever, ever have guns in this house. Ever.”

I’m not going to say I was surprised, but I was mostly amused. He must have been thinking I was talking about a hand-gun or an assault weapon or something—I just called it a Winchester over-and-under, and he must not have really processed what that meant.

“It’s just a shotgun,” I explained carefully, thinking that would clear things up nicely.

“Never, ever, ever,” he repeated.

Well, okay. It was a gut-check reaction; that was obvious. He hadn’t grown up around guns, and he’d spent a lot of his time advocating for assault weapon bans. He wasn’t able to put this in perspective right away, so I’d just patiently explain it to him.

“Honey, it’s not a Glock. It’s just a shotgun. It’s the ideal home defense weapon, because it makes a loud sound when you load it, and the spread is—”

“What if you killed someone in our house?” he shot back, not letting me finish.

I blinked. Several times.

“Well. I mean. There’s a lot of ritual and meditation that goes into loading a shotgun, so it’s kind of hard to accidentally kill the postman…”

“I’m not talking about that; I’m talking about what if you killed some poor kid that broke in to steal our television? I’d never forgive you!”

Wow. What a sentence, right? Fraught, pregnant with meaning.

We don’t live in a traditionally “great” neighborhood. Our blue-collar working-class neighborhood is pretty low for violent crime, but it’s high for theft and such. And I was alone, a lot, both the year before and the year after we were married.

“Luke, I…well I’d have to assume…if someone did break into our house while I was here, I’d have to assume that they were there to do me harm. I mean, you just have to make that assumption. Would you rather me be dead or the kid that broke into our house?”

It was obvious by his silence who he’d prefer, and so I spent the next two nights in the guest room.

In six years of being together, it has been one of the most difficult arguments we’ve ever had.

◊♦◊

I did not share this conversation with my parents, for a couple of reasons.

I have never believed in running to my mother about every fight Luke and I have because it’s not fair to Luke. My mother’s job is to always take my side, even when she has no real idea what’s going on, and so I leave her out of anything that’s not a big enough argument that we might get divorced over it. This means I leave her out of everything.

Luke’s parents are dead and he doesn’t really have anyone to “take his side”. My parents have always been very thoughtful about treating him as a son, not a son-in-law.

And I also didn’t share this conversation with my parents because Luke and I had gotten engaged very quickly, and were getting married very quickly, and they were already a bit unsure about the situation. His being a self-professed giant commie liberal Yankee didn’t soothe matters.

So, when Luke met my parents for the first time that summer, they suggested with absolutely no ulterior motive that we go out shooting.

I am unashamed to tell you that my husband was afraid of that shotgun the first time he held it. He’d tell you the same thing.

The car ride to the shooting range was maybe the longest, quietest car ride I have ever been on.

I didn’t do the talking; I just shot. I let my Dad do the talking. He’s a more patient and thorough instructor than I am.

I am unashamed to tell you that my husband was afraid of that shotgun the first time he held it. He’d tell you the same thing, and I think that’s understandable for someone from an urban metropolis who has never held a gun, any gun, before. Guns = death, that’s a fact and hard to process.

I could tell he was afraid because he held it slightly away from his shoulder when he fired. In spite of the numerous corrections on how to sock it in against his padded vest, he couldn’t physically bring himself to do it until we were half-way through the day. The noise of it frightened him, made him unsure of himself; the recoil (made worse by his insistence on pulling it slightly away from himself) was uncomfortable and scary.

And I’m sure, in spite of how large and bulky a shotgun is, every news story about horrible accidents ran through his mind the whole time, unleashing mantras: Do not accidentally shoot your fiancee. Do not accidentally shoot her parents. Do not accidentally shoot that elderly gentlemen over there, or those teenagers practicing with their father. Do not kill anyone, do not kill anyone, do not kill anyone.

When he finally got the hang of it, when things finally clicked for him, he ended up shooting in the mid 30s—not half bad for someone’s first time to shoot any kind of gun, ever.

My Dad was pretty proud of this. Even now he’ll regale you with The Tale of the First (and Last) Time Luke Went Out Shooting.

“Shot in the thirties his first time out of the gate,” he’ll say proudly. “That’s pretty good for a Yankee, don’t you think?”

Then he’ll beam. It doesn’t matter to him that Luke has never been shooting with him again, or that he has virtually no desire to, ever—he tried it, in spite of being visibly nervous, and then he managed to overcome his nerves and become good at it, and these are the only components that matter to my father.

♦◊♦

After Luke went out shooting with my parents and me, the texture of our conversations about guns changed. His stances didn’t, but the fabric—what the conversations were made of—had altered.

This was increased by a bachelor weekend a year or so later, in which he and the groom’s party went to a handgun range. He now understood better what he was talking about when he advocated gun-control. He understood the innate difference between firing something like a shotgun, and a handgun, and an assault weapon, because he’d fired all of them at least once.

When he came home, I waited patiently for him to explain his feelings.

“It was strange. You’re right, about it being very meditative and ritualistic, what you have to go through to load a shotgun just to fire two shots. And a handgun isn’t quite like that, but an assault weapon is the worst.”

We shot at human targets.

He’d fired an AK-47 that was modified to reduce recoil.

“It was exactly like playing Duck Hunt on Nintendo. It didn’t move. There was no kickback. It was this bizarre combination of being the deadliest thing I’ve ever held, and the most similar to holding a plastic video game gun. It was so easy to totally divorce myself from that gun and its effect. You can’t do that with something like a shotgun. It requires too much physical interaction on your part.”

“What did you shoot at?” I asked him casually, wondering if he’d make the connection.

“That was uncomfortable too,” he said. “Because we shot at human targets—that is to say, those paper silhouette things. Like, literally, the intention was to shoot something standing in for a human being. It’s a completely different mental process than going out and shooting sporting clays with your father.”

I smiled at this. I’ll tell you a secret that my husband didn’t know at the time: I love my shotgun. But I loathe handguns and assault weapons. I loathe them even more than my husband does because I have more experience with them than he does.

♦◊♦

I was given a Jericho for my sixteenth birthday.

The Jericho is a semi-automatic. It’s sometimes called a “Baby Eagle”, although it has no real relationship to the much larger, more powerful (frankly, fucking terrifying) Desert Eagle, which had been perfected by the Israeli military to blend the gas-powered concept of rifles with a handgun in order to allow for much more powerful cartridges.

Regardless of this lack of relationship, I loathed it the first (and last) time I ever handled it.

It was far heavier than I’d expected it to be—it looked so small compared to my shotgun.

And earnestly? It looked evil.

It felt evil. This was a gun invented to do evil things.

And in spite of it being heavy, it was a lot less cumbersome to maneuver than my shotgun. This alone, that it was so easy to wave around, fucking terrified me.

“I don’t like it, and I don’t want it. It makes me nervous. It’s not right. Someone like me should not own that gun.”

If my father was disappointed, he only let it creep around the very thin edges of the conversation. Mostly, he was understanding. Maybe he was even proud.

I have no idea where that gun is now. I only know that he took it back from me and that I don’t own it. Frankly, not knowing where it is also fucking terrifies me.

If I could have taken it apart myself and destroyed all the pieces, I would have, for reasons I didn’t even understand at the age of sixteen. I only understood that I loathed it, and something I had such a strong, immediate spiritual reaction to was not a good thing.

But I’d understand those feelings a lot more intimately after college.

♦◊♦

When I was in college, I spent several years with an abusive boyfriend.

I didn’t realize how truly terrified I was of my boyfriend until I left him, because my god, our ability as women to sweep so much under the rug is practically infinite.

He was smart, though, so it was a quiet kind of abuse—very few marks. Very few public displays of anger. Hard worker, upright citizen. A bit quiet, and a bit cold, but not the kind of man you’d expect to slam his girlfriend into kitchen cabinets.

I didn’t realize how truly terrified I was of him until I left him, because my god, our ability as women to sweep so much under the rug is practically infinite. Even as a feminist activist, as a woman who had participated in the Vagina Monologues three years running, as a woman who worked domestic violence hotlines, I was still able to rationalize so much about his actions for such a long time.

Nine months after I left him, he called me crying at ten o’clock in the morning. He was drunk. He was hurting. Life was hard. And I still loved him, and only wanted good things for him, so I rushed over to his apartment.

For the next hour, he held me hostage with a Glock pistol, a semi-automatic handgun. This has also been the gun of choice for Jeffrey Weise, James Holmes, Cho Seung-Hui, Jared Lee Loughner, and most recently, Adam Lanza.

In my case, it was a gift from my boyfriend’s father. For “home defense.”

It is perhaps the calmest I’ve ever been in my life. He moved from pressing it against me to pressing it against himself, changing constantly, threatening to kill us both.

Wait. Wait. Wait, said my mind. Be patient. Your chance will come. And if it doesn’t—or if it does and you don’t take it—you’re both going to die here. Be patient.

I was patient, and my chance did come—because he set it on the coffee table right before he fled to the bathroom to throw up.

I’m astonished he didn’t take it with him, but the same thing that perhaps made him most dangerous—being unbelievably drunk—also probably clouded his general understanding about just what the hell he was doing.

The second he made it through the bedroom doorway, on his way to the bathroom, I plucked it very carefully off the coffee table, picked up my purse in the other hand, and left.

You’re doing so good, honey, you’re so brave; I just need you to breathe for me right now, okay, we’ve got someone on the way. Stay on the line and just breathe with me.

I sat in my car at the very edge of the parking lot, with the doors locked and the engine running, for a minute or two. I was at a loss: while I knew I needed to call the police, what the hell should I do about this gun I now possessed? It was loaded, it doesn’t have a safety, and I didn’t even want to drive with it in the car.

So I executed the slowest series of movements I ever have in my life. I mimicked what I’d seen my boyfriend do a dozen times: I pressed the magazine catch, removed the magazine, and set it in the large cup-holder of my truck. Then I pulled the slide back, which is maybe the scariest thing I’ve ever done: one round in the chamber.

The bullet looked strange to me, but I had a hard time processing why. I set it on the console of my car, studying it as I calmly dialed 911. Why did it look so strange?

But more importantly, who was going to take this gun? I asked myself this as I punched the three little numbers. I had to call someone, I couldn’t just keep this gun. That’s how fucked up my thinking was at the time: it was all about the gun.

When the 911 operator picked up, I was still so calm, so cool, so very collected. I stated my name. I stated my location. I stated the nature of what I was calling about.

“You see,” I said after I’d relayed a short two sentences about the situation, “I had to call—because I don’t know what to do with the gun. Someone has to come take this gun.”

And then, like flipping a light switch, I promptly lost my shit.

I’ve never cried that hard before or since. It was the hysterical kind of crying where your chest feels like someone is repeatedly stabbing an ice pick into it, where you lose all feeling in your hands, where you can’t even breathe, let alone speak. I tried for minute after minute just to talk, just to get out one word, but everything I tried resulted in a sickening screaming sound that I couldn’t believe was coming from my body.

God bless and keep you, 911 operators. That woman on the other end of the line was so wonderful.

“You’re doing so good, honey, you’re so brave; I just need you to breathe for me right now, okay, we’ve got someone on the way. Stay on the line and just breathe with me.”

I wanted to tell her okay, I’m going to, thank you so much.

I screamed instead.

“You’re doing so good! You’re so brave! Just breathe. Breathe for me, that’s all I need you to do.”

A male and female police officer showed up a few minutes later. The woman had to tap on my car window several times because I had locked myself in and couldn’t process that she either needed me to open the car door or roll down the window to talk to her.

We exchanged a lot of information in that very short time, but the thing that struck me the most was when I handed them the gun and the accompanying magazine.

“The fuck,” said the woman. That’s it. Just two short and seemingly very out-of-place words.

They were clarified a moment later by her partner, who had peered down to look at what she was seeing. “These are hollow-points,” the male officer exclaimed. “They’re meant for piercing armor.” I’d found out later that they weren’t, actually. They were meant to maximize flesh damage. None of that mattered at the time. I just understood why the round had looked so strange to me.

♦◊♦

After that, things moved very fast, as you can imagine. It wasn’t until a month later, when I had returned from my stint with my parents, making up my final exams, and walking the stage at graduation that I realized the single round I’d set on my console, the round in the chamber, had rolled off in my hysteria, to be lost in the dark space beside my seat.

My ex was calling me a lot. Two, three times a day. I hadn’t pressed charges, because I didn’t want him to lose his job, and although I had attempted to take out a restraining order, the local DA at the time was “cracking down” on “unnecessary” restraining orders, compounded by the fact that I hadn’t pressed charges and didn’t intend to.

I was leaving in a few short weeks anyway, moving halfway across the country.

It remains one of the biggest regrets in my life, that I didn’t press charges and fight. A couple of years later I found out that he was seeing a woman with three small children. I found out that he was considering applying for law enforcement.

Not pressing charges is something that has haunted me ever since.

But was young at the time. Scared. Confused. And sad. I found it difficult to get outside of myself, and I didn’t understand the potential echo effect, the repercussions, of what my own inaction might entail. We so seldom do.

So I did the only thing I knew to do: I kept that bullet, that tiny piece of deadly metal, and I looked at it whenever my ex left another voicemail on my phone.

“I wear an albatross around my neck for all I’ve done,” he said on one voicemail. Poetic. Sad. A reference to Coleridge.

Fuck you, said that bullet. You don’t get to reference Coleridge, and you don’t even get to be sorry.

That little, compact piece of death has traveled to Ohio with me.

You might expect that it rests someplace romantic, like my jewelry box, but you’d be wrong, because it’s not a thing that I romanticize.

It lives in a shot glass, on our kitchen counter, which is probably the last place it should live. You can see it if you come over to our house; it’s right there. I’ve noticed more than one person eye it without comment, but I can’t bring myself to put it anywhere else or to get rid of it.

I see it every day, and every day it reminds me.

A few months ago, I managed to see my best college girlfriend in Seattle. She’d spent two years with the Peace Corps, and we’d been apart a long time. She’s still had to travel several hours to see me, but she did it because I was on “her side” of the country.

“You know what’s always bothered me?” she said. We were sitting in a bar, alone, drinking gin. Several other friends, including my husband, sat in the hotel lobby away from us.

“Samantha told me awhile back that you kept that bullet. Is that true?”

I nodded.

“But…why would you do that?”

“Oh,” I said. “That’s simple. Because it reminds me. It reminds me that I am alive. It reminds me what I’ve gone through to be who I am. And it reminds me where I come from, and why I believe what I believe. And it reminds me to never, ever go back.”

◊♦◊

And I’ll tell you something else: this essay is long, and it’s taken a round-about road to my thesis, because it’s not really a thesis at all—it’s as essential to my soul as light and breath. We have enough “theses” and “theories” and “commentary” floating around right now, enough to drown in. It would be easy, in fact, to drown in it—to just choose never to come up for light or breath again.

I’ve taken the long way around because I want you to understand.

Not just read, not just “process,” I want you to physically, in your core, I want you to feel it, and to understand it, what it is that I feel, what it is that I know.

And when you talk about this, I want you to see me, and feel me. And when you begin to form an argument in your mind, I want you to have to consciously disregard me. I want you to have to emotionally set me aside. I want you to have to invalidate and rationalize me by choice.

You can advocate or rail against whatever you like, but I want you to have to push past me to do it.

Because I didn’t fight then, but I will fight now.

Because reading the pro-gun lobby comments on Sandy Hook—not the well-reasoned, sensible ones, of which there are very few, but the outright insane ones, of which there are many, that openly advocate sacrificing the lives of our children for unfettered “freedom” of adults, the ones that suggest that all those teachers should have been armed to the teeth, that the Westboro Baptist Church will be there praising “God’s judgement,” and that even my mother—my own mother’s comment that crazy people are just going to do crazy shit, and that this has nothing to do with guns —as if it were just that simple—

Well. There is a time-warp, a black hole that blooms in my soul.

For each and every time, with every comment, with every outraged indigence about “trampling” on the second amendment, with every word and breath, I am that young woman again, sitting in her truck in a parking lot, alone except for a 911 operator.

About Haley B. Elkins

Haley is a freelance writer living in the Midwest. She holds a BA in English literature, women’s studies, and technical writing from the University of North Texas. She is also married with three wily rescue dogs. More at Haleyelkins.com

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142 Comments on "I Grew Up With Guns, Then I Was Held Hostage With One"

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Chris

3 years 4 months ago

This is what scares me. People who consider themselves “responsible” gun owners because they grew up around guns and take one out of a closet once a year to go play. They speak from a pedestal on the basis of how familiar they are with guns, but prove sentence by sentence they are not. I would be scared as hell, too, if I were your husband based on your cavalier attitude toward true gun safety and your pattern of poor choices and irrational thinking. You don’t coerce someone into using a gun who isn’t familiar with them. You educate them… Read more »

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Leah

3 years 6 months ago

That was incredibly long-winded, and I still don’t know what the point was.

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Andrew Daigle

3 years 10 months ago

I don’t want to agree with one side or the other in this argument, but Kevin H, you are being irrational, insulting to other people, and are very close minded. If you want to get your feelings, and your point across, have a polite discussion. You are making yourself sound less smart then I’m sure you are. You seem like an intelligent individual, please act accordingly.

When I originally commented I clicked the “Notify me when new comments are added” checkbox
and now each time a comment is added I get several emails
with the same comment. Is there any way you can remove me from that service?
Many thanks!

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Danielle

4 years 7 months ago

Haley, this is a heck of an article, and it must have both torn up your soul and freed it to take us through your experience. Thank you for your generosity.

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Rum

4 years 7 months ago

Kevin H You seem to be saying that if the political leaders you admire say there is a valid category of things rightly labelled “assault weapon” that must be true. Like, Bill Clinton always told the truth about everything and so could be trusted about gun issues. You guys could find a lot of support for gun control among gun owners if you gave up on the quest for the ability to instantly seize all legally owned firearms. But you never will because that IS what you really want; apparently it is the only thing you really want because every… Read more »

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Rum

4 years 7 months ago

Kevin H I live in the US but I know about Gun Laws in Canada. I know that is a form of cheating a a debate thread where so many do not have that background knowledge. You keep changing the subject. You publicly lost the debate about cartridge power the second I pointed out the documentary trail of the FBI and the US military to obtain stronger rounds than the ones you said were too powerful for civilians to own because they would totally “destroy” something like deer. Apparently, YouTube told you this. Anyway, the end-users of the 9mm handgun… Read more »

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Kevin H

4 years 7 months ago

Rum, I never change the subject, I always respond to your points. I’m sorry that disagreeing with you somehow equates to “emotional” in your book. Communicating with others must be awfully difficult. Me saying that I don’t care about the cartridge is not the same as “losing”. It means it’s irrelevant to my position or point. I do not appeal to emotions, I present logic. The US has significantly more gun violence than any other country. The US also has a very loud, very well-funded lobbying organization that spends lots of money convincing people that guns=freedom. The US also has… Read more »

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Rum

4 years 7 months ago

Kevin I have read several books on terminal (that is, impact) ballistics. I am very familiar with the FBI studies underlying their recent decision to go to a larger more powerful handgun round than the 9mm. I am very familiar with the efforts of the US military to find a stronger round than the .223 , which has developed a bad reputation for being seriously under-powered. The only AR I own has an up-graded load from a .223 because I am personally quite aware of the limitations of the standard round. Kevin H has watched guys on Youtube. FWIW, I… Read more »

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Kevin H

4 years 7 months ago

Rum, I could read tons of books about firearms and ammunition written by people who want more people to have more access to firearms and ammunition. It’s not going to trump what I can see with my own two eyes. If a gun can shoot bullets faster than 1/second, that’s not appropriate for citizens to be able to buy without restriction. And you can do whatever you want in Canada as long as your laws allow it. The original article and all of my points are pretty specific to the US. If you don’t like the gun laws or the… Read more »

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Kevin n

4 years 7 months ago

Now you are talking nonsense and insulting people. Are you a troll? Were you put here to make inane comments to stir up comments?

You admit you know little about the topic, but have lots to say.

Who cares about hunting guns? Do you really think that is what the 2nd Amendment is about? If so, you are sillier than I thought.

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Kevin H

4 years 7 months ago

Rum is still making up half truths. Richard is still insulting me because I don’t know the differences between specific names of ammunition. At least Kevin N has stopped spouting nonsense? Is there anyone capable of reasonable conversation? Assault rifles (and as I’ve said before, whether you like the name or not, that’s what they are) are not hunting guns. They are not necessary for home protection or self-defense. You can hunt or protect yourself with plenty of other weapons. Why do you need it? Without referencing the second amendment, why should the government not ban them? Specifically, Rum, you’re… Read more »

Guns that lacked the force to shoot several people in certain circumstances would also lack the ability to even slow down one bad guy in another. It would be exactly the same as mandating that no car have more horsepower than needed to go the speed limit on level ground and zero wind. A nearly useless car.iows. If car rules were made by folks who knew zip about them this is where we would end up.

Low powered guns inflict death about as well as high powered ones. Just a lot more slowly. Therefore lowered guns should henceforth be called murder guns.

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Prime

3 years 8 months ago

Murder implies a certain intent, one which is held by very, very few gun owners.

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Michael Singer

4 years 7 months ago

The premise of the article heading is false. Did the gun hold you hostage ???? How can a inanimate object hold a animate object hostage ? Should be a easy answer – it didn’t. The honest answer is a a person with a gun did. So, lets proceed forward. The title should read – “held hostage by a bad person with a gun”. One can be held hostage by a knife, bomb, baseball bat, or a “box cutter”. Remember 9/11 plane takeovers ? The planes that flew into the Trade towers were not held up by “guns” but by evil… Read more »

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Kevin H

4 years 7 months ago

I’m growing tired of the bulk of this debate. People like Kevin N throw insults and then when called on it, say that people like me can’t handle reality. I have no interest in continuing that type of conversation. Several more, like Richard Aubrey, insult me by saying that since I don’t own and know everything about guns, I cannot possibly form an educated opinion. So only people who shoot and know everything about guns can have an opinion? Perfect. I wonder what their opinion will be? Obviously I find all this to be “icky” and “scary” and that’s why… Read more »

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Prime

3 years 8 months ago

“The presence of guns was not a deterrent.”

The motivations of the shooter are always a factor. Burglars, rapists, muggers, and rival drug dealers generally aren’t deliberately suicidal. They make up the bulk of killers, and they can and often are deterred by the would-be victims being armed.

“More guns didn’t help.”

No? Then why is it that Hasan didn’t stop until he was shot by someone else?

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Kevin N

4 years 7 months ago

Calm, civil discourse = you agree with me

Kevin H is taking his marbles and going home, because he was getting picked on simply for missatating facts and repeating anti-gun talking points. And he still continues to repeat the same things. He is still mistating what happened at Ft Hood. He clearly knows little about guns, but wants us to believe he is engaging in “critical thinking”.

It does help to know something about the subject matter if you are going to state an opinion, and lecture to us heathens that want to retain our Constitutional rights.

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Kevin H

4 years 7 months ago

Kevin N, you are the problem with this debate.

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Kevin N

4 years 7 months ago

Whatever. Go find a forum where everyone agrees with you.

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Kevin H

4 years 7 months ago

That’s obviously not what I want as noted by what I wrote earlier. But then, you don’t bother to read what I type.

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Rum

4 years 7 months ago

Kevin H The problem is that you “cannot imagine” a lot of things that are part of the real world. Law Enforcement persons in many places are required to keep a loaded weapon with them nearly all the time. Do you think they have different DNA than the rest of us? Are they smarter? Are they different? In my world, every gun is loaded. They may or may not be; you treat them exactly the same. But in fact, they mostly are loaded at any given time. They are kinda useless otherwise. Where I live in Texas there have been… Read more »

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Rum

4 years 7 months ago

I think it matters a great deal whether someone would have a problem with a background check because 1. an address change 2. an armed robbery conviction. As a far as breaking the law is concerned, most of us commit about 3 felonies a day, if the scrutiny were to be fully applied. Very few of us could survive the extreme exposure to The Letter of the Law. As far as out of the blue shooting situations, cops do no better than civilians because no one is prepared for that. Recall the recent episode in NYC where like 12 bystanders… Read more »

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Kevin H

4 years 7 months ago

Exactly. It matters. So the background check should always be run. I speed regularly. I make a choice to disobey that law. However, I;m also willing to accept the consequences for doing so. If you break the law, prepare to pay the price. If the price is that you cannot own a gun, sorry. I don’t think a gun is going to help you make that choice. if a team of robbers break into your house in the middle of the night, do you really think you’ll be able to wake up, prepare your gun, and calm your nerves so… Read more »

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Prime

3 years 8 months ago

“if a team of robbers break into your house in the middle of the night, do you really think you’ll be able to wake up, prepare your gun, and calm your nerves so that you can shoot them without putting your family at risk?” This has been done, many many times, by men, women, and even children. Not everyone turns into a quivering mess a the first sight of a surprise threat. As a result, it is only a small percentage of home invasions in this country that occur while the occupants are home. Burglars genuinely fear being shot, and… Read more »

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Kevin N

4 years 7 months ago

You give an extreme example and say therefore a gun will do you no good. You don’t know anything about guns, so you are willing to say no one should have them. Of course, a gun you have to “prepare” will be of no use. Anyone familiar with guns for use in selfdefense knows it should be kept loaded and readily accessable. You don’t know that, so you speak from ignarance. If all you want to use for protection is your cell phone to call the police to come pick up the pieces of whatever is left of you and… Read more »

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Kevin H

4 years 7 months ago

Kevin N, You continue to be less than helpful. In my mind, “prepare” refers to loading or unlocking your gun. I can’t imagine that you sleep next to your significant other with a loaded gun under your pillow. I can’t imagine that a person with children in their house would leave a loaded gun on a bedside table. Your arrogance and aggression leads to your ignorance, other Kevin. Your lack of critical thinking has led you to make several comments that are not verifiable by fact or statistics. I do not need to be a gun owner to be able… Read more »

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Kevin N

4 years 7 months ago

So anyone that disagrees with you is “less than helpful”? Lame.

You can’t imagine sleeping with a loaded gun access able because you are not trained in the use of guns and have no familiarity with them, or the concept of self-defense. Of what use would an unloaded, locked gun be for self-defense? Please explain.
You continue to mistate facts about shooting incidents, and guns, then get your panties in a wad when challenged. Please point out where you have done any “critical thinking” and not just repeated anti-gun talking points.

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Rum

4 years 7 months ago

Kevin I am not saying that gun laws are always followed at all Gun Shows. But neither are they always followed at Gun Stores or in Parking lots. But I would argue that they are more likely to be followed at the typical GS than elsewhere because they are high profile. There is always a big LE presence. Heck, there are always uniformed cops checking out any item that someone intends to bring in and sell. One thing these “investigative journalists” love to do is to say to a seller aqt a GS, ” I might not be able to… Read more »

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Kevin H

4 years 7 months ago

Rum, Were you friends with the Aurora shooter? Did you see his plans? Do you know that he chose that theater because it was a gun free zone? No. That’s speculation. Furthermore, if he never had access to the weapons he used in the first place, whether or not it was a gun free zone would be irrelevant. I don’t blame the man at the mall for not taking out the shooter, my point is that his gun did nothing. He did the right thing. The right thing was to not shoot him. So what protection did his gun serve?… Read more »

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Rum

4 years 7 months ago

Kevin Gun Shows are popular with dealers and buyers because it is so efficient for both. It is the how most people buy and sell guns these days. They have by far the largest inventory to select from and the most qualified buyers all in one place.. And yes, all sales by dealers require a background check. There are Cops everywhere, btw and undercover ATF guys. But shouldn’t you already know this? If you ever went to one of these, all this would become instantly obvious. Instead, you just take at face-value what some anti-gun person says about them no… Read more »

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Kevin N

4 years 7 months ago

He knows anti-gun talking points; isn’t that enough?

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Kevin H

4 years 7 months ago

Thanks Kevin N, once again you were very helpful. Rum, I’m not just taking at face value things that anti-gun people tell me. I’m talking about investigative reports by legitimate journalists. People who research the law and go to the gun shows with cameras and with hidden camera. You can tell me what the strictest laws are in the strictest places, but I know, because I’ve paid attention to this topic for years, that there are places where people can buy guns without background checks at gun shows. My pro-gun control attitude is not a knee jerk reaction to any… Read more »

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Revo Luzione

4 years 7 months ago

KH,
At Fort Hood, and every other military facilty, most soldiers aren’t allowed to carry guns on base. Only the Military Police are armed on base. Ironically, bases, outside of rifle ranges & live drill areas, are gun-free zones. That’s why that guy was able to kill so many soldiers–they were unarmed, sitting ducks.
The Oregon mall shooter, once confronted by the permitted concealed carry holder, went to a stairwell & shot himself.
You’re either ignorant, or twisting the facts to fit your biases. Looks like both, actually.

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Kevin H

4 years 7 months ago

Revo, the military police were armed? So there were armed people on the base? And what did they do to help?

And, by all account that I read, the man with the concealed carry permit hid behind a pillar because he couldn’t get a clear shot. crediting him with ending the shooting is twisting the facts to fit your narrative.

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Kevin N

4 years 7 months ago

Kevin H, they shot and arrested the shooter. You could look it up, but like most anti-gun nuts, you find facts to be obstacles that get in the way of your narrative.

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Richard Aubrey

4 years 7 months ago

Problem with this pafticular Kevin piece is that there was never, not one, report that the troops were armed. He can’t point to any report to excuse it as a mistake.

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Kevin H

4 years 7 months ago

No one ever had a gun on Fort Hood? There were no guns on the premises? There were no military police? No guns at all?

Do you have anything of substance to add?

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Revo Luzione

4 years 7 months ago

Fort Hood is a very large place, the size of a city, but with a much smaller police force, which are usually stationed at the entrances. They were very far from the shooter. All of the soldiers in the immediate vicinity were unarmed. Do some research, brah. Google is your friend. But, a friendly reminder, it helps to have an open mind when you start to research things. It’s clear that you are unable to consider the opposing position. I am an effective advocate for firearms freedom precisely because I went through a time of questioning the logic of the… Read more »

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Kevin H

4 years 7 months ago

Tom, an off duty deputy? You mean a person who is trained and regularly retrains to be able to use a firearm appropriately? Yes, I’m glad that person was there and that she was able to stop the shooter. That should be more publicized. Does this prove that the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun? No. Partially because we should try to stop the bad guy from getting the gun in the first place. Also because we aren’t playing in the sandbox anymore, so we have more complicated issues… Read more »

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Tom B

4 years 7 months ago

Bet you have not heard of this one…On Sunday, 2 days after the CT shooting, a man went to a restaurant in San Antonio to kill his X-girlfriend. After he shot her, most of the people in the restaurant fled next door to a theater. The gunman followed them and entered the theater so he could shoot more people. He started shooting and people in the theater started running and screaming. It’s like the Aurora, CO theater story plus a restaurant! Now aren’t you wondering why this isn’t a lead story in the national media along with the school shooting?… Read more »

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Richard Aubrey

4 years 7 months ago

Kevin H. You need to do your homework. The Ft. Hood shooter was not surrounded by armed soldiers. He was in a processing center where paperwork was being done. Everybody knows this. What’s going on? You didn’t have to say this. Nobody was talking about Ft. Hood. On military posts, weapons are locked up in arms rooms. When it’s time to do some training with weapons, the guys line up at the arms room, swap their weapon card for their weapon, go to the training area, draw the ammo. Then start training. The only folks on the main base with… Read more »

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Rum

4 years 7 months ago

Kevin 99.99% of sales at Gun Shows are from Licensed Dealers. Private individuals can sell their personally owned guns to others without a back ground just like they could on Craigs List. To prevent all private sales without background checks would eliminate ownership without government over-sight. If that is the goal, at least be up front about it. The only moral, ethical use of a weapon is to stop bad things from happening. Killing is never the point. It is much harder to stop a person or animal in its tracks than to merely cause them to die, eventually, from… Read more »

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Revo Luzione

4 years 7 months ago

Rum is spot-on here, except that Craig’s list has prohibited the sale of firearms & ammo. There are other local avenues, usually, but craig’s list is not one of them.

Re: the “gun show loophole,” it’s mostly been closed.
Most states require gun show purchases to run through the background check database just as if purchasing from a regular gun dealer. There is no difference in my state, and most states, from buying at a dealer or a

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Kevin H

4 years 7 months ago

Revo: If certain state don’t require that, then the whole thing is useless. Rum: What righteous acts are committed with guns in this country? The more gun, the better? If we saw an increase in drunk driving, would we insist on stronger alcohol? Since the act of shooting a person or animal is inflicting pain upon them, there is nothing righteous about it. Shooting someone because they are trying to shoot you does not make you a more moral person in the same way that punching someone before they punch you does not make you a more moral person. It… Read more »

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Rum

4 years 7 months ago

Kevin At Gun Shows, individual people sometimes show up to sell or trade a firearm that they already own. They are not gun dealers with a Federal Licence. 99.9999% of sales at any Gun Show are no different than at a Gun Store because the seller is a licensed dealer who must do the background check just as if it were happening at his store. For private sellers, Gun Shows are no different than selling stuff on Craigs list. Preventing private sales at Gun Shows would entail preventing private sales ANYWHERE. Without the background check. Which equals no private, unregistered… Read more »

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Kevin H

4 years 7 months ago

You mean to tell me that Adam Lanza could have shot first graders 11 times before they hit the ground with any gun? I doubt that. Do I think guns should only be bought from licensed dealers in stores that keep records of who buys whats? Um, yes. Why would I not want private citizens to sell them to each other? Because private citizens don’t do background checks on each other. You mean to tell me that a person who walks into a gun show and wants a gun has to wait for a a complete background check? I don’t… Read more »

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Rick

4 years 7 months ago

I doubt that the shooter (let’s not use his name and reward him, eh?) could have shot anyone 11 times before they hit the ground with any gun whatsoever. Who says he did? Oh, and the point of bullets that overpenetrate is that they have a certain range. To make them accurate (so you don’t accidentally shoot something else), you have to make them travel at a certain velocity. Well, FMJ rounds are far more likely simply to punch a hole through someone or some thing. Background checks are typically supposed to be instant, Kevin. You run someone through a… Read more »

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Rum

4 years 7 months ago

Laughing Girl Every point you made about civilian gun ownership applies equally well to Cops. I mean, what are they so afraid of? Isn’t it time for them to grow up? Can’t they learn some situational awareness? I can tell you guys exactly what gun owners are afraid of: Being put in the position of someone who has a Doctor forcing him to take Medicine that is actually the cause of the symptoms that require amelioration. Disarming the good guys = empowering the bad guys. Stricter gun laws lead to more gun crime which produces a cry for more strict… Read more »

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LaughingGirl

4 years 7 months ago

Rum, I have no problem with police officers and members of the military and national security organizations having firearms. Why? Because they’re well trained and must maintain their proficiency. They practice-fire weapons until the proper way of using one is ingrained in their reflexes and muscle memory. They also have a reason to carry–our safety–and there is oversight of what they do with the weapons. I have a problem with the person who buys a Magnum because Dirty Harry shot one in the movies, goes to a range once or twice with some other fool who hardly knows how to… Read more »

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Jameseq

4 years 7 months ago

again,
guns here uk ,certainly since the 1950s, have not been used as defence weapons. there was no concealed carry permit, and the gun and ammmo had to be stored seperately in the home, in a safe

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Jameseq

4 years 7 months ago

gun crime rose in the 90s because criminal gang(they mostly shoot each other, if they shoot at all. still not in the culture to freely use guns like usa gangs do) got their hand on cheaply imported guns from the balkans wars, i remember reading at the time

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Rum

4 years 7 months ago

Kevin Issues in no particular order 1. Gun laws are the same at shows as anywhere else. Closing the so-called exemption means mandatory registration of all legally owned guns. Confiscation later on is of course impossible because they will have promised not to. 2. Bullets designed to not do maximum tissue damage will penetrate thru about 4 or 5 people in a row and ricochette off hard surfaces brillantly. Those are 2 reasons why Law Enforcement uses nothing but hollow points and it would be crazy for anybody not to do the same. 3. The term “assault rifle” is like… Read more »

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Kevin H

4 years 7 months ago

1. If gun laws are the same at shows as they are in shops, we need serious help in gun stores. I’ve watched plenty of reports from multiple different sources. Anyone can walk into a gun show and buy a gun. No background checks. No waiting period. Just immediate gun. Maybe they have to show an ID? Ok, that does a lot of good. So, are you suggesting that because we’ve already let it happen, to start changing that now would be pointless because of all the guns already sold that way? I don’t accept that response. 2. Why do… Read more »

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LaughingGirl

4 years 7 months ago

Kevin H–thank you. I’ve lived alone in some not great places. I was a nurse and worked crazy shifts, getting off at 1 or 3 or 5 in the morning, or leaving home at those times. I’ve had my car break down in some bad areas. I worked home hospice and walked into some rough neighborhoods wearing a big name badge that read “Hospice.” (We never carried drugs, but not many people knew that.) I’ve driven across country–alone–five or six times, a 3 to 4 day trip. My point is that in all these situations, I never had a firearm.… Read more »

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Kevin H

4 years 7 months ago

You know, I don’t think they’re any more or less afraid than you or I. I think they’re just convinced that gun = freedom = America. They won’t outright say that, but that’s what they’ve been convinced. Notice the way they can’t justify assault weapons without the second amendment and if you suggest that it be repealed or that you forget about it for the sake of conversation, either they can’t do it, or they say you don’t care about the Constitution or the founding fathers or anything else that’s typically deemed “American”. And they’ve been convinced to value this… Read more »

What one be afraid of: A person should always maintain an active awareness of the situation around them, especially in public spaces. If something about it starts to inspire a few tingles of fear, own that and open your eyes and be honest about what you see. By all means, leave the area if the vibe persists. Never confront, never approach, just put distance between you and that which is causing concern. This is all no more than common sense. But sometimes it is not enough. Despite being aware and unprovakative sometimes the threat follows you and thinks it can… Read more »

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Kevin H

4 years 7 months ago

Rum, it’s not really fair of you to accuse someone of using scare tactics when you describe a person being kicked in the head to the point of brain damage and needing a gun to protect his/herself. I lived in North Philadelphia for 4 years. I’ve been chased down the street by a gang, had my car and apartment building broken into, watched other cars get broken into, and had friends held at gunpoint. I never saw the need for me to have a gun. Although I’m sure you could make a case that in any one of those situations,… Read more »

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LaughingGirl

4 years 7 months ago

Well-put comment (not mine) from another site: “Gun lovers are so much more afraid of life than normal people. They are cowards, chicken, sissies, scaredy-cats, babies… unless they have their security blanket aka gun. They put the lives of their children, spouse and guests at risk through their selfish obsession (love) of guns, and their abnormal fear of life. “If you are in a house with a gun, you are twelve times more likely to be killed by a gun. “Those selfish scaredy cats are setting their own children up to be killed by a gun. Child Protective Services should… Read more »